Henious beyond belief is the situation first brought to everyone's attention by Laura over at Bloggety, of her friend, comics shop owner Paige Gifford, and her troubles with the IRS over her back inventory. There's been a great response all over the comics community to this situation over the last day or so. Now it seems that, in Laura's most recent update, Paige is resigned to the fact that there's nothing she can do to avoid having to pay thousands of dollars in taxes on her unsold stock, unless she destroys it by a set date. Dirk Deppey and Jim Henley provide a nice roundup of links on the topic so far.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but does the idea of being forced to shred hundreds upon hundreds of books, both good comics and crappy ones as well, fills me with dismay. While I'm not necessarily worked up over old copies of Force Works or Steeltown Rockers being destroyed, there's still the frightening precedent this sets, especially if this tax law gets widespread attention and the IRS's gaze is turned on your local comics shop. The notion of someone shredding unsold issues of, say, Penny Century, 100%, or Kane (or name your favorite) is appalling to say the least.
I don't know what can be done, but I do know that this is all kinds of wrong and if by chance someone who knows something about tax law that hasn't already read the coverage on another blog can do something, anything...then I will have helped a bit.
Boy, these are uncertain times we live in, aren't they?
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